Not only am I well aware of that, but it also makes me wonder when men are seen as the default human. (and this is a guy wondering that. though I tend to nearly exclusively play female characters in rpgs, so might not be typical of my gender)

You know, a lot of female gamers purposely use gender neutral or male names and play with male characters, in order to avoid the bullshit that can come with being perceived as female. Which is to say, yes, a lot of women play video games *and* a lot of female characters are played by dudes.

Just saying, it probably wasn’t until very recently in the human history that this would have been discovered. By that time, men had already made there claim as dominant for millenium, and when it is something is sitting on the carpet for that long, it ain’t coming off with Spot-Shot alone.

That’s actually a common misconception. What actually happens is that the parts of the body that will eventually develop into sexual features start off the same for both men and women, as a sort of biological scaffolding for the gender-specific stuff to be built. The claim “We all start as women in the womb” comes from the fact that in this pre-gender state there is no penis, and generally when most people think about males and gender, they think of penises. However, the differences between male and female are more than just one has a dangly bit and the other doesn’t, unless you think that the genderless proto-person is still a women, despite not having breasts, ovaries, or a vagina.

Looking at that sculpture image reminds makes me want to make a player character. Which reminds me I’ve already made a player character in the new Animal Crossing. This comic makes me want to play Animal Cros–::turns on 3DS::

Reading your post reminded me that I wanted to build a character for Fellowship. Then I got to thinking on what the damage, notice and encumbrance modifiers would be for various kitchen implements.
I think I can get an adamantium fry pan or maybe a soup ladle since that would be more historically and character appropriate.
(pulls out 3.5 books)

It’s mostly a fear thing. I mean, he hasn’t done anything particularly evil, so we also respect and admire him, but it’s hard not to pay attention to a man who can crush your head between his thighs without moving his thighs or even being near you.

heh, are we going to get a women’s studies (or whatever it’s called now) class taught to us via webcomic? Pretty sneaky there willis. Not that I mind; taught by a good teacher, this topic can be fairly thought provoking.
And that’s from a conservative (sorta) male.

I’m not particularly digging this metaphor here, but I’m hoping the next comic better fleshes it out so it makes more sense.

One could interpret it as saying that we all already know the truth, but may have to scrape away the BS to find it. I don’t believe that we have some innate knowledge of all truths though, so that interpretation doesn’t work for me.

As I said before, hopefully the next comic will clarify or correct the interpretation of what we’re supposed to get here, as I don’t believe that this is what David/Leslie is trying to say, though I’m unclear on what it is that they do want to say.

Think of it this way: If you were wrong fundamentally to begin with, then you never really knew what you actually wanted the sculpture to look like. Maybe you were going for a vulture and ended up with a flamingo! In that case, you could say that you didn’t know the truth of the sculpture until you got pretty far into it.

Also, it’s not about scraping away the bs. It’s about sculpting ideas. Maybe you knew that Dumbing of Age was drawn by the same author as Shortpacked, but only just now noticed they shared some characters. You haven’t scraped away any bs, you’ve really just noticed some flaw in your perception of reality and fixed it. Leslie is saying that you will continue to find flaws like this as long as you live if you look. there is no such thing as a perfect truth. Even once you’ve been hit by a truck.

It’s not about innately knowing the truth, but a description of the pursuit of knowledge. The sculpture is your general aim (“I want to learn physics!”) or the ideal state you conjure up. Now, as you actually do the work of making this sculpture manifest (removing the ignorance, learning, etc.) you’ll find that the ideal is pretty much impossible to achieve. There’s no way to learn everything about physics. You can get pretty damn close to the general form of the ideal, and with a ton of practice and hard work you can make it seem perfect to almost anyone who isn’t versed in sculpture, but the more you learn the more glaring the minor flaws seem.

There’s a infamous sentiment that “art isn’t finished, only abandoned”. This is basically paralleling that to the pursuit of knowledge. You can never achieve that ideal of “I’m going to learn physics” because there’s always more to learn and the statement is just a broad and ideal form of a goal that can never be realistically achieved.

I think it’s the “removing ignorance” bit that’s bugging me. Ignorance is something that is filled in or replaced with knowledge.

If you want to stick with a sculpting metaphor, I’d say that reality is the model and you add clay (knowledge) to try to make your sculpture match reality. The more knowledge you have (and I mean accurate information here) the more closely your representation matches reality, until it’s just minor details that you need to work out. Adding inaccurate knowledge is like adding clay of the wrong colors and shapes. The problem is that some people don’t spend enough time studying reality, or they just plain care more about how they want reality to be than what it really looks like, so they end up with a statue covered in a patchwork of mismatched clay that looks nothing like what it’s supposed to represent.

It actually seems less like a lecture and more like an ad hoc response to the concerns of one of the students, which is totally appropriate all semester round.

Truthfully one of my most hated things is walking in on day one to some kind of “Prepare to learn/ let’s mold some young minds” lecture that spans the entire class. Sweet shit, prof. Spent an hour on the bus just to get here, give me something for my time.

I don’t think I’d have anything against quickly addressing one of the additudinally challenged students in the middle of an other-wise themed lecture. Classroom can be a relatively fluid thing depending on the professor. Nothing wrong with dealing with a problem as it presents itself so long as when somebody asks “How was class?” I don’t get to respond “Got to learn about how class is for learning”.

I was really hoping someone would get hit by a truck. We could have a “Final Destination” themed week! Who’d die first? I’d guess Danny, but then again Amazi-Girl would be there to save him and she might get hit by a truck instead.

That depends on the technique used.
I am guessing here that you meant that with clay you can add bits back on if you take too much off.
Clay is forgiving and ever malleable [before you fire it] but wood and stone is just one cut away from disaster.

Although, the students should just shut up and take the damn class. This started from Roz’s attitude problem two days ago. If she thinks she doesn’t need this class than why the hell is she there? Even if it’s a gen ed requirement class there are always options on those.

This isn’t a math, science, or engineering course where stuff works the same no matter where you go. The content of the exams will be heavily dependent on the personal quirks of the professor. So Roz damn well does need to pay attention to her class materials. Even if she knows a lot she may not know the things that Leslie deems important.

I used to be a teacher, and the comment yesterday about “women should be treated as equals” touched a cord that we had drilled into us. Equality and Equitability are two different things, and Equality is on the losing side. To give an example:
Assume you’re giving out 500 pairs of shoes. If you’re treating everyone equally, they all get the same shoe, regardless of gender and shoe size. How disappointing to the majority who don’t have that shoe size!
If you treat everyone equitably, then they all get appropriate shoes that are sized to them.
A lesson the teacher could bring to a Gender Studies class. Don’t treat people equally. Treat them equitably!

The oddest part I find about this metaphor, is that whenever I’ve worked with clay, that isn’t how I work with it… I tend to Mold with clay, squishing it into shape rather than scraping away to get the right shape, the scrapping is what I’d use for fine detail. I tend to think of using something more solid, like a form of stone, when it comes to sculpting like this. I wonder if the omission of Molding the clay is intentional here? Well, we’ll probably find out in 25 minutes…